Summer in Beijing

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Hi,
It’s Mid-autumn Day, a national holiday in China and a time when families get together to eat round “moon cakes” and wish each other long lives of good luck and happiness. 8th August was the first day of autumn, and I was told that it is often the beginning of the worst month of heat. Luckily August wasn’t paticularly bad this year.

Before it ends, I’ll sum up summer in Beijing in one word - HOT! Ohmigod it has been unbearable. Ireland doesn't know the meaning of "hot". I would advise visitors not to come to Beijing in the summer. Schools are closed and all tourist sites are crowded with both Chinese visitors and foreign tourists. You become obsessed with trying to figure out how to escape the heat and the crowds.

The stifling heat has gone on since early June but should soon ease up, I’m told. Every morning when I first look out my apartment windows, I am regularly surprised at the extent of the pollution. It is sort of like heavy clouds in Ireland. My half-hour walk to work along the canal at 8:30am is almost bearable, but by the time I arrive at the office I need about 15 minutes to recover from heat exhaustion.

I used to walk home at lunchtime but I stopped that after my holidays. I had to go home once midday to collect something and I nearly collapsed when I arrived back at the office, the heat was so intense. I usually stay on at the office after 5:30 quitting time and even at 7:00 it is still quite hot. I’ve often walked home at 9:30pm and found it uncomfortably warm. There is a seldom a breeze, which makes the heat worse.

I had heard that July is the rainy season and thought, "That should be nice and cooling." Wrong. But Lordie does it rain!! Unfortunately once the rain stops it is just as hot and humid as before. Almost every evening in July there were dramatic lightning and thunder storms that continued for an hour or two, accompanied by lashing rain. It's not windy like in Ireland, it just pours straight down. Sometimes I don't realise that there has been an early morning rain until I leave the apartment block and have to navigate huge puddles. My "duck boots" from Winnipeg have come in handy. One morning it only began to rain about 8:00am but I did remember to wear my duck boots. By the time I walked out of our complex to the street it was flooding. I whipped out my camera and took a photo to show you. I have attached them here. Then I had to wait in a queue of pedestrians who were one-by-one making their way along the narrow ledge of a one-foot-high flower planter bordering the flooded sidewalk.

A couple of weeks ago when I was leaving this office building I noticed white whispy clouds in the sky. I thought to myself, "Hmm, we don't often see that." Then I realised with a shock that behind the clouds was blue sky!! I hadn't seen a blue sky in over 6 weeks. I've attached the photo here. Amazing, but it only lasted about 24 hours. I think we had had 3 or 4 days of really heavy rain that week so maybe that explains the blue sky.

I heard that before the Olympics in August 2008 all factories were shut down and the clouds were seeded to dump any rain and ensure blue skies for the two weeks. But as soon as the Olympics were over the heavy cover of pollution clouds returned. I haven't seen many people wearing face masks though, so the locals must all be used to it.

I almost always wear a sunhat outdoors, no matter what the weather is like. I'm hoping it will give me some resistance to the effects of pollution. I’m friends with a young man who is not from Beijing but has been studying here. He said that he and his friends have noticed that they all have receding hairlines and thinning hair. They figure that it is due to the pollution. Yet you don't often see Chinese people wearing hats.

However, I've also heard that October is a beautiful month in Beijing so I have that to look forward to. I figure that the cold winter will be tolerable after this summer torture.

I continue to be pleased with my apartment. There are big glass windows across the east side where the morning sun blazes in. I had blackout lining made for all the curtains and I keep them drawn in the daytime. (That's another tip I learned in Winnipeg for coping with intense summer heat.) The blackout lining here is much better than in Ireland. It is thin, lightweight dark silvery fabric, almost like silk. I've noticed that hotels in China have their curtains lined with it so I don't need my famous GroAnywhere blind there.

My apartment is so high up that I don't hear traffic noise or children playing at the outdoor pool. There is a children's climbing frame/activity area near the base of my block and I'm often surprised to look down and see that there are no children playing there on the weekends in the daytime. Then it was explained to me that the plastic would be so hot the children would stick to it! The area is very busy in the evenings, with lots of small children and their grandmothers - but that's another topic!

There's another area with exercise equipment children play on. I was told that the equipment is specially designed for older people to use to improve their fitness. That's a big issue in China.

Speaking of fitness, that is one thing I've been concentrating on since my holidays. Our complex has an outdoor pool that opened mid-June, is not very deep and is often full of children. The parents sunbathe on loungers at the side. The indoor pool is about 1.5 metres deep and 25 metres long and has two small, separate children's areas. I go to the pool five or six evenings per week and do 12 lengths, the same every day. Sometimes I have to navigate around kids who are learning to swim but generally by 9:00pm there are a few of us just doing lengths so we are left in peace. Then I go into the jacuzzi in the women's change room. Sometimes it is full of mothers and children and lots of plastic floating toys, then I give it a miss. In the winter there is a sauna and a separate humidity room you can sit in for a while. I'm not sure what that's about.

Soon after I started swimming in the evenings I noticed a Tai-chi class in an exercise room in the complex. (They have step-aerobics and dance classes other evenings.) The classes are free to members so I have been going to Tai-chi on Tuesdays and Thursday from 7:30 - 9:00pm, followed by swimming. I have always wanted to learn Tai-Chi so I am delighted. It’s called “Tai-ji” by the Chinese. The 3-month series is up soon and we hope to persuade the Management to have the teacher back for another series.

After my holidays I resumed my one-to-one Mandarin classes twice/week for 1 1/2 hours. For part of one weekly class I am learning to write characteristics, which is interesting. My spoken Mandarin is getting better and I can now go to the market, give directions to a taxi driver, order food in a restaurant and buy tickets, which is progress. OK, I do have to repeat myself because usually when I say something in "Mandarin" the Chinese person says "Wha???" But Chinese people are very friendly and helpful so we can usually reach some level of comprehension and I manage OK.

I also am kept busy going to Chinese art films. I think they are referred to as "cinema veritie". I must have seen more than 20 since I arrived. Last weekend was a retrospective of a famous director so I went to five, but that is unusual. Although these films aren't documentaries, I find that they give me an insight into life in rural villages in China and their customs and traditions, as well as life in "hutongs"/neighbourhoods of Beijing and big cities. Last night's was about a woman in Inner Mongolia who was looking for a husband. She was riding a camel to herd her sheep and brought the herd to a watering hole just like I'd seen in the Gobi Desert. I thought it was brilliant! China is changing so rapidly and I appreciate that these films are capturing the old ways before they disappear.

It is very handy that one of the main art cinema is only 30- minutes’ walk from my apartment. The Moma complex opened in 2009 and is amazing architecturally. I’ll attach a photo. As a member of the cinema club I can also borrow books and dvds and get a ticket to a film for €2.50.

So you can see that my life is very full and busy here. No regrets, that's for sure. And I haven't even begun to tell you about the extra social gatherings that I try to fit in. Tomorrow the staff from the office are going to a karayoke (sp?) evening. I hear it's a real slice of Chinese social culture so I'm really looking forward to it.
Don’t worry, I’ll be back to tell you all about it!
Cheers, Sheila

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Photos

a blue sky day!
- take a photo, quick!

the canal
- what is that green scum?

.. and fish in it.
- the circle of styrofoam keeps the scum away - ingenious.

MOMA Linked Hybrid
- the glass walkways encourage "interactive relations"

Moma ponds
an architectural gem